What If They’re All In On The Lie?

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There’s a thing about lying in that, past a certain point, liars need people to actually believe them. Not just pretend to believe them, but actually believe them so they do what the liar wants. You can’t have that terrible risk of being dishonest to someone and finding out they’re as bad as you are. They might not do what you want or lie to you about it.

In the year of 2026 (how I hate to date myself, but it is necessary) I keep an eye on political pathology, conspiracy theories, and what is currently called The Right in America and Elsewhere. I say currently, again, since context and times change.

One of the things I notice as I scrape through podcasts and writings on conspiracy theorists is how many of them lie and it’s clear they’re lying together. You can watch or listen to assorted people, famous and want-to-be-famous shaping narratives as they go, taking the yes-anding to new levels as they add things together. Liars lying together.

But these are the actions of Conspiracy Theorists who, let’s be honest, are pretty much the same as what we call Influencers. They have a lifestyle of, well, saying and promoting things. Their goal is to Influence. I guess we used to call it propaganda or marketing, but now it sound almost respectable until they think about it.

Then I look at the legions of would-be Influencers. Maybe some of them want to make it a career, maybe they want social media hits. But many of them also jump onto the conspiracy train, be it to sell their courses in 5D Immune Meditation or for likes. So their job is already to at least sort-of lie to us, then they latch onto the Conspiracy crowd and just get in on the lie.

In the past I commented about how people have sounded more and more like the 3 P’s – Politicians, Pundits, and Preachers. The Conspiracy Theorist-Influencer-Political dynamic has made so many people impossible to differentiate, from the podcaster spewing crazed anti-semetic theories on aliens down to someone who just wants to be loved for their content. It’s liars all the way down.

But I wonder how far down it goes. Because if you’ve ever heard someone “normie” talk these weird theories you wonder how much they believe them. Is that friend of yours who’s getting increasingly radicalized one of the honest people being affected or are they getting in on it?

How much of our culture, our politics, is liars all the way down? Everyone is lying, from selling products to wanting to “own” their family members in a dinner table argument?

This makes me think the more conspiratorialist side of American (and world?) culture is inherently unstable. If everyone’s job is to lie, to be abstract from the truth, top to bottom, how do you function? How do you trust each other, since the person in on the lie with you has proven they will lie? For that matter how much of conspiratorial politics is even actually believed?

What if the people who are bellowing the loudest don’t believe their own bullshit and neither do most of the people who listen to them? What if everyone is lying?

Do I have an answer? No, but I invite speculation. And I will probably write more on it.

I’d promise to write more, but I’m being honest.

–Xenofact

The Petty People

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In reading various Taoist documents, especially some of the various comments on the I Ching (“The Tao of Organization,” and the “Taoist I Ching,” both translated by Thomas Cleary), I often see comments on “petty men” or “lesser men” and so on. I had a revulsion to these terms, but the more I saw them used, the more I started wondering what the authors meant, and that lent to some interesting conclusions. The conclusions are also instructive in analyzing such documents, so you get to read a column about it.

So in regarding “petty people” (let’s not be gendered here), the more I saw it used, the more I realized it wasn’t a simply dismissive term. Sometimes it was a simple acknowledgement that people had small moral and personal capacity – but they had a chance to grow. However most times it was very dismissive, a warning of people whose smallness was far worse, an outright danger.

Many of these discussions were also couched in terms of yin and yang, the receptive and the initiating – hardly a surprise as my two major sources were I Ching translations. In such takes on the I Ching of a social nature, yin and yang usually refer to followers and leaders. However depending on the time and place of a person, leadership or following could be good or bad.

In many cases warnings about “petty people” would come, often referring to them as yin, as followers. Yin and yang had their places, petty people however seemed to be followers, and often those were in the wrong place. Sometimes you might have a “petty person” in an appropriate follower spot, but often not – they seemed to get into the wrong place for them.

At some point as I contemplated this, it struck me why we had warnings about petty people. The dangerous petty people, the ones we got warnings about instead of “they need to grow” were followers who thought they were leaders.

Then a lot of what I was reading became clear. Or I’m arrogantly assuming I figured it out, but at least by writing it down you can put me in my place. Let me not be a petty person.

The “petty people” that we got warnings about were people who thought they were leaders, thinking they had good ideas, had authority, had something to say.. But at heart they were followers, having neither the strength to implement real leadership, but also probably easily led by other people and forces. Not just people of small capacity, but small people acting large.

That realization quickly catapulted me to looking at history both recent and in the past. How much horror was inflicted by people who were small but in positions of leadership? Who were led by emotions, manipulated by others, perhaps even knowing how small they were and angry about it. Insecure and arrogant and of limited ability and understanding.

I also thought about annoying internet personalities and influencers. Watching people put on performances, acting like they had something to say, but down deep they were mouthing platitudes or repeating what others said. They were acting like leaders while just following trends and imitating knowledge and characters. Many suffered audience captures, so-called leaders slavishly following their viewers or readers.

Leaders who are really followers. People who were, essentially, lied to themselves and to others. Those were the petty people various Taoist authors had warned me about. OK, that I assumed they were warning me about.

And perhaps my take is spot on and I’m brilliant. Or perhaps I’m off, but had a useful insight. Either way that’s an insight that helps me understand the world, all inspired by some Taoist writings and two big takes on the I Ching.

Which is why, to loop it all back, thinking over books like these are useful. You make the effort to think and analyze and learn a lot – and it may not matter if you went a bit off the rails or not. You learned something.

I suppose if I can keep learning, I’m at less risk of being one of those petty people.

–Xenofact

The Blind Hunger of Nothing

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As I write this in 2025, I’ve become fascinated by the amount of people in our culture that are Performative (capitalization intended). They want attention, internet clicks, regard, and engagement, so therefore do whatever gets them that. The Influencers, many a politician, no small amount of media personalities, and way too many social media addicts are Performative; some seem to be only Performative.

OK actually all of those kinds of people are Influencers. Anyway, let’s go on

A peculiar thing I keep noticing among these people for whom Performance is a lifestyle, is the only thing in their life, is an anger that burns inside them. It seethes beneath the surface, it bursts out in conflict far beyond something for attention. It’s seen in the glowering, contemptuous eyes and the edge in the voice that disregards most everyone if not everyone.

I’ve wondered as to the nature of this anger, as there are times it seems outright inhuman. The Performative people are all image, all anger, and in some cases seem barely human. There’s an emptiness there.

So, let’s talk desire.

Desire is the cause of suffering, a we are all too aware from our studies of psychology, Buddhism, Taoism, or just being alive and unhappy. Dealing with desire is a major part of mystical and not-so mystical practices.

Desire cannot truly be sated, it always comes back. It can be satisfied temporarily, perhaps enough for regret or enough to move on. One may recognize the temporary nature of the satisfaction and employ that awareness for wise choices. However many desires have at least the illusion of satisfaction, and in turn there’s some chance of definition.

We want to get laid. We want a drink. We want to get that promotion. Desire has at least some definition, even if we’re deceiving ourselves.

But for those who are Performative, I think satisfaction is elusive. You may engage in Performative behavior to make money or sell something, but the Performative nature can overtake your life. Some people just want the attention – or end up that way – and their entire lies are just about putting on the act to get the clicks, the praise, what have you.

The desire for attention is inherently unsatisfying. It’s temporary, it has to always been maintained, and it’s easily challenged. It also doesn’t relate to anything. You may become Performative to achieve some other goal, but your goal is to be someone else for people you don’t know to get ephemeral attention in order to get advertising dollars or something. You end up abstract from your goals – to achieve solid goals you must be epehmeral.

And that’s if there’s even much of a goal beyond a desire for attention.

I think the Very Performative people are so angry because there is nothing that can satisfy them even temporarily. The become only an act, without even the solidity of the illusion that they can feel satisfaction. They exist as pure performance, always on, always for the ephemera of attention, always empty.

Imagine walking around knowing you are nothing inside. Whatever was there rotted away as you worked on The Performance. You can’t even feel right. Even your anger is just a bitter resentment of everything because you’re nothing.

This insight is helping me understand the Very Performative, that look in their eyes, their instability, their sudden outbursts. They’re a giant yawning gap of desire with no chance of satisfaction because they’re empty of even something to desire. Their a ghost haunting the empty house of their own lives.

–Xenofact